OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2017
Founded in 1873
HEIDI WRIGHT, Interim Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND, Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
COLUMN
Alex Pajunas/The Daily Astorian
Public schools and local governments are struggling to meet pen-
sion obligations.
This year’s World Series
ends with a whimper
Oregon needs
deep examination
of PERS solutions
T
he best idea to come from Gov. Kate Brown’s PERS
task force was creating a matching fund to help schools
and local government pay for their pension liabilities.
The Public Employees Retirement System serves some
900 public employers in addition to state government. A state
match — say, 25 cents on the dollar — could encourage faster
action by those cities, counties, school systems, fire districts,
community colleges, public uni-
versities and other entities.
These governments and the
state need to come up with $25.3
billion to fully fund PERS’ obli-
gations to retirees. Until they act,
PERS will consume more and
more of their operating budgets,
meaning less money for programs
and services.
How would the state pay for those matching dollars? Ah,
that’s the rub.
And for local governments and schools, their current usu-
ally overshadow future obligations. How would they come up
with the money to gain a state match? That’s another rub.
In its report delivered to the governor on Wednesday, the
PERS task force didn’t provide the answers.
The group of seven financial experts emphasized that it was
not making recommendations. Instead, it came up with a list
of ideas that could deserve study. They range from nonstart-
ers such as privatizing state universities to reasonable propos-
als like setting up the matching fund and selling surplus state
land.
Except the state doesn’t know what it owns. Individual
agencies do, or at least they should. But the task force dis-
covered there is no overall inventory of state-owned land and
property.
That underscores the weakness of the task force. It con-
vened in July but no one acted to have that inventory created
by the time the task force held its fourth and final meeting in
October. Meanwhile, the gap in PERS reserves continued to
grow by billions of dollars.
With a complete inventory in hand, the task force could
have made — or at least explored — the often-difficult deci-
sions of which surplus lands to sell and which to hold for
future use. That work had seemed a key role when Brown
appointed the task force. Members did come up with a few
possibilities, such as selling the State Office Building in
Portland and replacing it with less-expensive real estate.
As Brown and legislators prepare legislation for the 2018
Legislature, workable ideas may yet develop. But what the
task force provided was a broad picture of PERS possibili-
ties. What Oregon needed was a deep examination of PERS
solutions.
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AP Photo/David J. Phillip
Houston Astros’ Carlos Correa, left, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, with World Series trophy, and World
Series MVP George Springer ride on top of a fire truck during a parade honoring the World Series base-
ball champions Friday in Houston.
By STEVE FORRESTER
The Daily Astorian
F
or San Francisco Giants fans,
this baseball season was a bur-
den. After winning three World
Series, the Giants
finished 40 games
out of first place.
Needing
a
replacement
for
my baseball affec-
tions, I turned to the
Giants’ arch rival
— the Los Angeles Dodgers. They
are in our time zone, and their allur-
ing win-loss percentage was the best
in baseball.
What I did was treason in the eyes
of some baseball chums. Our baseball
friend Bob Bernstein in Washington,
D.C., asked my wife if he should fly
out to do an intervention. At a concert
intermission, Dan Supple scurried up
the steps of the Liberty Theatre bal-
cony in disbelief at my new team.
Dan didn’t use the word heretic, but
it was in his look.
For many years, the great base-
ball writer Roger Angell would pro-
duce a long New Yorker piece weeks
after the World Series ended. This
saga would glance at the season and
recount the heroics of that year’s
championship series.
This year’s series would be a chal-
lenge for Angell. There was Yasiel
Puig’s botched catch in the second
game, which unleashed Houston’s
first victory. There was the five hour,
17 minute Game 5 and its tit-for-tat
dynamic and the 10th inning, 13-12
outcome. Finally there was Game 7,
in which LA left 10 runners on base
and scored one run.
The most prescient observation
I heard was from the Fox Sports
broadcaster John Smoltz. During the
fifth game, Smoltz said: “It hasn’t
been a classic series. But it has been
unexpected.”
A well-crafted short story ends
with a paragraph that illuminates
everything that came before. The last
line in a poem sometimes explains
everything above. Imitating T.S.
Eliot, the World Series ended not with
a bang, but with a whimper.
resident Donald Trump’s bad
treatment of Puerto Rico has
fueled my dark suspicion that if the
Big One were to strike our region
during his presidency, he would be
slow to send assistance. Oregon,
Washington state and California are
blue states. It is unsettling to nurture
that dark notion, but we have Puerto
Rico’s example.
P
When Gen.
John Kelly quit
being Trump’s
straight-arrow
minder, he
violated the
first rule of
the theater
he most penetrating observation
about Trump has been that if peo-
ple get too close to him they soil their
reputation. Retired Gen. John Kelly,
the White House chief of staff, is the
latest victim. Beyond what Kelly said
about a congresswoman and the Gold
Star mother she defended, Kelly vio-
lated the first rule of casting. In other
words, Kelly was hired to play the
straight-arrow general — to bring
order to the chaotic West Wing of
the White House. With his decision
to pitch in on Trump’s prolonged,
bumbling response to a Gold Star
mother, Kelly left the character he
was cast to play, in order to become
one of Trump’s thugs. And in theat-
rical terms, his performance is not
credible.
One looks for some humor these
days, because our politics are so
wretched. What Gen. Kelly did
somehow reminded me of what the
T
Hollywood film mogul Jack Warner
said when he heard that Ronald Rea-
gan was running for governor of Cali-
fornia in 1960. “No, no,” said Warner.
“Jimmy Stewart for governor; Ron-
ald Reagan for best friend.”
his is a good season to hike the
trails of Fort Clatsop. On an
October Sunday afternoon, my wife
and I hiked the Kwis Kwis Trail. If it’s
been awhile since you’ve been there,
you’ll notice trail improvements.
Walking that trail system is a
reminder of the storm of 2007.
Upended giant trees and their
immense root systems border the
trail.
Cathy Peterson, education pro-
gram coordinator at the fort, tells me
that her daughter Jenna, while on
Kwis Kwis, saw a mother bear and
cubs. Jenna, says Cathy, realized she
and the bears had a mutual apprecia-
tion for the berries.
T
he classical music world loves
centenaries. Across America,
symphony orchestras are rediscover-
ing the works of Leonard Bernstein,
who was born 100 years ago next
August.
For many of us baby boomers,
Bernstein’s Young People’s Con-
certs ignited our curiosity about clas-
sical music. At the same time John F.
Kennedy was becoming America’s
first telegenic president, Bernstein
used TV to make the concert stage an
exciting place.
When Bernstein brought the New
York Philharmonic to Portland in
August of 1960, I wanted to see him.
The Civic Auditorium was being ren-
ovated. So Lenny and the orchestra
performed in the Pacific International
Livestock Pavilion, now the Portland
Expo Center. Responding to their
cowboy surroundings, the philhar-
monic opened its concert with “Hoe-
down” and “Buckaroo Holiday” from
Aaron Copland’s “Rodeo.”
Steve Forrester, the former edi-
tor and publisher of The Daily Asto-
rian, is the president and CEO of EO
Media Group.
T